Civil Rights: The Apologist

After arguing before the Supreme Court last week, Jerris Leonard refused to pose for photographers with a lawyer who had supported his plea. "That is one honor I will decline," said Leonard, who is chief of the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division. His reluctance was understandable. Leonard had just become the first Government lawyer ever to ask the high court for a delay in school desegregation. His unaccustomed ally was John C. Satterfield of Mississippi, the most prominent segregationist lawyer in the country.

Together, Leonard and Satterfield were fighting suits brought by the N.A.A.C.P. Legal Defense Fund, which asked the court to order immediate desegregation of school districts in Mississippi. Citing 15 years of evasion by the state, Defense Fund Attorney Jack Greenberg argued in his brief that such an edict was necessary "so that protracted litigation loses its attractiveness as a tactic for delaying desegregation." By contrast, Leonard urged the Justices to affirm a lower-court order that gives the school boards until Dec. 1 to submit new desegregation plans—but sets no deadline for implementation. "Disestablishment of a dual school system is often a somewhat complicated process," said Leonard. Although the process was supposed to begin in 1954, he insisted: "it is simply unreal to talk about instantaneous integration."

Only last August an HEW expert, Dr. Gregory Anrig, submitted plans for each of the school districts that he described as "educationally and administratively sound both in terms of substance and in terms of timing." Why did the Government decide to block those plans this year? Leonard says that it was because HEW needs additional time to study and perhaps refine them. Another report, by William E. Cresswell, former administrative assistant to Senator John Stennis, claims that the Nixon Administration traded a delay in desegregation for Stennis' vote on its ABM approval (TIME, Sept. 26).

Whether or not Cresswell is right, Leonard has been forced to change his own tactics. He came to the Justice Department from Wisconsin, where he was the majority leader of the state senate and wrote the state's open-housing law.

Leonard vowed strict enforcement of civil rights laws, and he made a creditable start. Under his direction, the Civil Rights Division has filed 33 lawsuits against segregation in public accommodations and 15 against discrimination in housing. Last week—perhaps to assuage critics on the eve of his Supreme Court appearance—the division asked a federal court in Atlanta to compel Georgia to integrate its public schools by the start of the 1970-71 year.